By Will Collette
To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9kIPpaAwJs
This video was produced by the privately funded Rhode Island Foundation as part of a campaign to focus Rhode Islanders' attention on how to handle the challenges that face us.
This video uses actual tweets by Rhode Islanders complaining about this or that - yeah, we Rhode Islanders do that a lot - read by kids who then deliver a pretty clear message: instead of just complaining, do something.
GoLocalProv, a conservative-leaning website, devoted a full article to airing out the gripes by our Rhode Island right-wing intelligentsia against this anti-griping video.
They quote Mike Stenhouse, CEO of the RI Center for Freedom and Prosperity (and Free Clamcakes):
"It is further immoral that the Foundation seeks to subvert the voice of the people in their implied endorsement of the status quo politics in Rhode Island,"Justin Katz of the right-wing blog, the Ocean State Current, was even more worked up:
"The message from the people who produced this slick video...is that we're not being nice, that we're being dismissive....That we should just shut our traps and not complain about the treatment to which the powerful in our state subject us or when they do things like impose new fees, take away our rights, and slush around money sucked from our economy in a corrupt whirlpool (or when they use non-profit organizations to push political agendas) or blame them when things continue to go wrong, year after year. We’re just “trolling.”
So
that's what the Right hears when the kids say "be nice."
As a Rhode Islander, born in Central Falls, raised in Pawtucket and having returned to Rhode Island after a 25 year absence, I hear something very different.
After careers in Washington DC, Cathy and I happily made the choice to return home to Rhode Island to live out the rest of our days. We knew what we were getting into and we embraced it.
We know that Rhode Island gets the worst rap from Rhode Islanders, but also know that for most of us, there is no other place we’d rather be.
We also know that part of being a Rhode Islander is to complain about Rhode Island, but what I hear the kids saying is “stop being jerks” and start being constructive.
Katz and Stenhouse, like other right-wing groups such as the extinct RI Statewide Coalition and OSPRI, push the believe that people are running away from Rhode Island because they hate Democrats, taxes, corruption, but mostly Democrats when the facts are this:
Rhode Island’s population has been pretty stable, no better or worse than its urbanized neighbors in the Northeast.
Study after study after study shows the main reasons people move are climate, housing and jobs, not taxes.
The people in charge of trying to create jobs in both the public and private sectors will tell you that it helps when we promote the reasons why we love Rhode Island – its diverse communities, natural beauty, history, culture and, of course, food.
And if you want an example of what doesn’t help, look no further than the hyperbolic reactions of Stenhouse and Katz.